Chapter 812: Our Wish Is Slaughter (3)

For now, Qing went back to Kunming’s blockade zone and vomited up what she’d learned to Lord Physician.

“So... I still haven’t gotten the prescription, and I’m going to try going to a place in Gaegu County called Jeong Family Manor...”

“Hm. That’s strange. But, heavenly maiden, why are you so wilted? Did something happen?”

“No...”

It wasn’t “no” at all—her voice had no strength, her shoulders were slumped, and she looked completely drained.

Lord Physician had been about to press her, but he quickly let it go. An old man who’d lived a long time had that much wisdom—besides, when you thought about it, she was a woman.

Of course, it wasn’t that at all. It was simply a severe lack of slaughter—so-called mental malnutrition (slaughter) deficiency.

“But what’s strange about it...?”

“No, I’ve never even heard of ‘Jeong Family Manor,’ and what kind of idiot sets up tea fields there, anyway?”

In that instant, Qing’s eyes flashed.

“Something’s... suspicious? Suspicious, suspicious. I smell the scent of a conspiracy...!”

“Rather than suspicious, it’s just stupid. Even if you grow tea trees there, it’s bitter and astringent—hardly something you can sell.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just heard it that way since I was little. If you ask why our area doesn’t grow tea trees, they just say the land doesn’t fit—tea leaves come out spicy.”

“Our area?”

“Ah, didn’t I say? I’m from there. Noji Village. Around that area.”

It was the moment one of Lord Physician’s private secrets—of a drifter among drifters who didn’t even give his name—was revealed.

There was no way a person could have no hometown, and it didn’t look like Lord Physician had been trying to hide it either, but still.

“Ah, so it’s your hometown. But you’re saying you’ve never heard of Jeong Family Manor?”

“Hometown, my ass. What hometown does a wandering physician have? I’ve been drifting for—hm, over twenty years now, haven’t I? They say ten years is enough for rivers and mountains to change, and this is twice that. If what you’re saying is true, it sounds like some merchant with money moved in from outside—and if he’s brainless enough to try setting up tea fields there, he won’t last long.”

“Couldn’t he be doing something suspicious?”

“You think someone doing suspicious things would leave their tail out in the open like that? Some newly rich fool probably moved in from elsewhere. That area’s got pretty bad local bullying, but the more backwoods a village is, the more the local bullying scrapes the sky. They’re probably just watching and hoping he goes under.”

“No, that sounds... kind of convincing...”

The sharpness drained from Qing’s eyes again.

It was like her premonitions were just hopeless.

If she went to Jeong Family Manor, the old man’s words would probably be right again.

Weren’t the villages of the Central Plains closed-off and exclusionary to begin with?

The “hospitality” of Central Plains villages welcomed travelers—but the moment you tried to settle, they changed faces completely and turned viciously cold.

Honestly, it couldn’t be helped.

In the first place, what kind of decent person abandons their hometown and wanders around trying to settle somewhere else?

Obviously, it was someone who’d caused a major incident and been chased out—especially in a place where local customary law grew more “lenient” the longer you’d lived there, it must be an atrocious criminal even that couldn’t forgive.

Some villages were even hostile to travelers, period.

How many weren’t there that built actual barriers and refused all outsiders—closed, sealed communities?

So if some rich outsider tried to settle down, the realistic rural “kindness” was to pull every shameless, tenacious trick imaginable to squeeze money out of them—because they were rich.

Still, that wasn’t some unique habit of the Central Plains. It was simply natural human instinct.

No matter where you went in the world, “the countryside” was a place with that kind of ecology—an absolutely horrifying nightmare for outsiders.

Even in Qing’s hometown, there were countless victims who went down to the countryside drunk on the empty dream of “moving back to farming,” only to come back with deep wounds—economic, physical, and mental—from that stingy, damp, poisonous local sentiment.

“Aah, man. I can’t even be a knight-errant....”

What was a knight-errant?

People who rose up in justice against the countless villains scattered across the world, and swung their blades.

They slit villains’ throats to release the oppressed from their bitter resentment, and smashed villains’ skulls to show the world—through their miserable end—that justice still lived under Heaven, that bad people got punished, that Heaven’s mandate existed.

But was this right?

I’m trying this hard—so why has it been so hard to get even one good taste lately, and how can you do this to me? At this point, villains should be lining up everywhere I go...

Qing drooped again.

Lord Physician shook his head—back and forth.

Thinking about it, maybe she hadn’t been normal from the very first time he’d met her.

*****

Cutting off Taepyeongja’s wrist was put on hold for now.

A drug peddler wasn’t a Therapist, but at the very least, they were the kind of vermin who knew how to brew and make medicine.

Even to make a fake, you needed skill. He hadn’t just scooped up random “medicinal water” and called it a decoction, or clumped up black sludge and sold it as pills.

Lord Physician wanted to research a treatment medicine and figure out the prescription, so for now, keep him at his side and work him like a servant—nice and easy.

Honestly, Qing considered leaving Tang Nanna behind.

But no matter how she thought about it, Tang Nanna didn’t seem like the kind of person who would stay behind and let Qing go—and besides, it wasn’t something you could even recommend with a straight face.

Nanna hadn’t come to Yunnan Province for sightseeing. She’d followed a friend, and now Qing was supposed to tell her, You stay here and work a while? Like hell.

“Senior, will you be alright?”

“I promised to save this man’s life, didn’t I? Until you put away your hands and wrists, I have to stay at his side. I also took payment.”

Taepyeongja was wronged. Deeply wronged.

Separate from the debt for the treatment medicine, he’d paid a huge sum to the Tiger-Slaying Saber—an ultimate master—for escort fees.

But now he was saying, since I took your money, I’ll watch you even harder so you can’t run.

The Tiger-Slaying Saber’s logic was simple.

If he ran, the Heavenly Flower Sword would catch him and kill him.

In other words, if he ran, he died.

He owed a life-debt, so he couldn’t let him die.

Therefore, he would watch him closely so he couldn’t run.

I paid you and you call it guarding when you’re just monitoring me? Taepyeongja felt wronged to the point of losing his mind, but setting that aside—

“Heh-heh, please travel safely, miss. This humble one’s respect for Lord Physician has always reached the heavens, so you can’t imagine how grateful I am that you’ve given me an opportunity like this.”

Qing seemed close with Lord Physician. If Taepyeongja helped fervently at Lord Physician’s side and built some rapport, wouldn’t his wrists and hands be spared?

Qing spread her index and middle fingers, pointed once at her own eyes, then rotated her wrist and pointed at Taepyeongja.

I’m watching you, so don’t get any stupid ideas.

“Heh-heh, how could this humble one ever do such a thing?”

“Yeah. Let’s do this right.”

“Yes. I’ll do it well.”

And with that, departure.

About five hundred li to Gaegu County.

For people of the Central Plains, five hundred li wasn’t that far.

Even for ordinary commoners, walking about fifty li a day made it a ten-day trip—so even round-trip, it wouldn’t take a month. Wasn’t this basically a distance where you could trip and your nose would hit it?

Let alone for martial artists—superhumans who used internal energy.

And so Qing, overflowing with energy for all the wrong reasons, passed through villages big and small, staring at innocent commoners with bloodshot eyes and threatening them.

“Excuse me—are there any demonic masters around here? Like, an absolute bastard who deserves to die under Heaven, some villain who really ought to get divine punishment?”

“Mm. There aren’t any, martial artist.”

“Don’t hold back. I’ll take care of it nice and clean, no repercussions. Ah—if you’re being watched, or you need help, then of course—carrot—no, blink your eyes for me?”

“Ah!”

“Ooh, see? There is something!”

“These days, aren’t the bastards we ought to beat to death the Bai bastards? Because of that Bai Smallpox, look at this—what kind of chaos is this. What the hell are they eating, spreading a horrific disease like that, seriously—”

“Tsk—hey. Bai Smallpox? It’s just a strange plague with no confirmed name yet. You can’t just run your mouth like that.”

“Aigo, martial artist.”

The village elder looked around, then dropped his voice hard and whispered.

“They say it’s all a Bai conspiracy. They’re trying to build the Kingdom of Dali again, so they’ve decided to wipe out the other peoples while they’re at it—they wander around raising the disease, they say.”

“No—who the hell says that? The Bai are raising the disease on purpose? And what do you mean, ‘build the Kingdom of Dali again’? The Dali royal house is alive and well.”

The emperor of the Kingdom of Dali had voluntarily surrendered and asked to submit to the Central Plains hundreds of years ago—and for that praiseworthy act, they were granted the title of King of Dali.

And when the Zhu founding emperor fought the previous dynasty, he didn’t want enemies on the frontier, so he demanded neutrality and promised the continuation of the title.

The Dali dynasty itself continued just fine, even if it had been demoted from emperor to king.

“It’s just a strange plague, and pestilence just circulates when you’re unlucky—how’s a contagion going to pick and choose ethnicities? Don’t say things like that, and there’s already a prescription and a treatment medicine, so it’ll calm down soon. Don’t worry too much.”

“Aigo, is that so. That’s a real relief. I was worried it might spread to our village.”

“So—no demonic masters? What about bandits or robbers? Or scammers?”

“Mm. Nothing comes to mind.”

“Ugh...”

Yunnan seemed extremely peaceful—aside from the strange plague. For Qing, it was sad news.

You might wonder what kind of heart a knight-errant had, to feel sad because it was peaceful—but anyway.

Since she was disappointed, she also asked about Jeong Family Manor.

“Jeong Family Manor? Don’t know.”

“The Jeong family? Did our village even have a Jeong family? Ah, Gaegu County? How would we know what goes on there.”

“Ah, I’ve heard of it. In Gaegu, yeah—yeah—some rich young master moved in. How many years ago was that...”

“Jeong Family Manor? Didn’t they say he made a huge orchard? Eh, was that just about three years ago? You think fruit trees grow in three years? You’d have to wait ten years to taste the first fruit.”

“Ah, Jeong Family Manor? I heard he made a pile of gold in Hangzhou. In Yunnan, land’s everywhere, so he does every kind of business—how much gold do you have to have to do all that, right?”

Thankfully, the closer they got to Gaegu, the more detailed information popped out about Jeong Family Manor.

About five years ago, he moved in and threw up a grand estate—and then on the mountain land, he planted apples, persimmons, pears, and started building orchards all along the slopes.

And these days?

“Ah, these days he’s making a fuss trying to hire people to dig a mine. They say he was planting fruit, then spotted coal. But even if he’s hiring, who’d want to dig a mine?”

Coal—back in Qing’s hometown, that was just “coal.”

The Central Plains had been using coal for over a thousand years already, and it was part of why cooking customs here developed into that fierce, high-heat, quick stir-fry style.

If you dug into mountains, it came out often enough, and it wasn’t exactly a commodity the state monopolized and controlled.

Still, “digging a mine” implied the coal quality wasn’t ordinary. High-grade coal produced less smell but burned hotter—an in-demand product you couldn’t sell enough of.

But as mines in this era went, it was also a massive gamble.

With this era’s technology, you couldn’t guarantee how much mineral was buried—or even whether its quality was uniform.

It was also why rich people got investment requests multiple times a month from prospectors—mine-hunters who wandered around with hand-drawn maps.

And so, at last: Gaegu!

The conclusion Qing reached after asking around the entire journey to Gaegu County was this:

Yunnan is peaceful.

And Jeong Family Manor is lucky.

He planted a huge orchard, stumbled on a coal seam by chance, and decided to commit to mining.

Then why not recruit people openly and proudly—why recruit miners in such a vile, secretive way?

“Well, Big Sis—couldn’t it be because Yunnan is so abundant? It’s warm year-round, so even without a home you won’t freeze to death, and there’s so much produce that even if you just sweep through the mountains you can live—so they say Yunnan people are laid-back. To be blunt, they’re famous for being pretty lazy. So even if he offered extra pay to hire miners, people probably still wouldn’t gather.”

Qing’s shoulders slumped down loooow.

Of course.

What “grand conspiracy” could there be?

No—what was she even thinking.

Peace was best, right....

They said that at the very end of frustration, you became calm.

At this point, Qing almost felt refreshed.

She’d gotten hung up on tasting blood, and even after coming all the way to far-off Yunnan—so far she wasn’t sure she’d ever return—she still couldn’t relax, and it turned into this.

She should’ve eaten all the local food, seen the sights, and gone around with her friends. What was she thinking?

It was all delusion—delusion, nothing but delusion.

The clear, bright purity unique to the Tao returned to Qing’s eyes.

But Jegal Ihyeon’s expression wasn’t so good. He couldn’t smooth out the crease between his brows.

“Even if it fits, it’s separate from the strange plague’s treatment medicine, isn’t it? How in the world did they get the prescription and use medicine as bait to take people?”